Depression grants at the Board fall into two buckets: direct-service connection (in-service onset, often tied to a traumatic event) and secondary connection (depression caused or aggravated by a service-connected physical condition — chronic pain, sleep apnea, TBI). The secondary path is the most commonly overlooked.
Top 5 recent grants
Ranked by decision date. Each card shows verbatim Findings of Fact and Reasons & Bases pulled directly from the Board's published decision — no summarization, no AI rewording.
Findings of Fact (verbatim from decision)
The evidence demonstrates that the Veteran has a psychiatric disorder, characterized variously as PTSD, MDD with psychotic features, and GAD (hereinafter psychiatric disorder), and that psychiatric disorder is related to his military service.
Findings of Fact (verbatim from decision)
The Veteran's cervical spine disability is due to his service-connected bilateral knee disability.
Findings of Fact (verbatim from decision)
The Veteran's generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder is related to his service.
Findings of Fact (verbatim from decision)
Resolving all reasonable doubt in favor of the Veteran, his depressive disorder is due to his service-connected left knee patellofemoral pain syndrome and left knee postoperative traumatic scar.
Findings of Fact (verbatim from decision)
1. Resolving reasonable doubt in the Appellant's favor, the Veteran's acquired psychiatric disability was due to service-connected disabilities. 2. The evidence persuasively favors a finding that the Veteran's sleep apnea was due to service-connected psychiatric disability. 3. The evidence persuasively favors a finding that the Veteran's COPD was due to service-connected sleep apnea.
Reasons & Bases (verbatim excerpts from decision)
The Appellant, as substitute claimant, seeks entitlement to service connection for the Veteran's sleep apnea, depression, and COPD. […] Service connection for an acquired psychiatric disability, to include depression, and as secondary to a service-connected disability. […] Regarding secondary service connection, the examiner opined that the claimed condition was less likely than not proximately due to or the result of, or aggravated by, the Veteran's service-connected condition. The examiner could not determine a baseline severity of a diagnosis. The examiner reiterated the rationale regarding low mood associated with erectile dysfunction, and explained that there was no mental illness and has been none based on a complete review of the Veteran's claims file dating back to his entrance into service in the late 1970s. The Board finds the VA examination and medical opinion was more probative because the examiner based the rationale on the Veteran's medical history and, in discussing etiology, concluded that his symptoms were associated with his erectile dysfunction. The Veteran was not service connected for erectile dysfunction. Additionally, although the private physician noted depression, the VA examiner found that the Veteran did not currently meet the criteria for any mental diagnosis, based on DSM-5 criteria as required for VA disability purposes.
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The decisions above are the most recent grants — they may not match your specific nexus theory or fact pattern. The NexusVetClaims Precedent Brief runs a semantic search on your exact situation and returns 10 decisions (8 closest analogous matches + 2 instructive contrasts) as a filed-ready PDF with suggested citations and placement guidance for every VA form.
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How to use these decisions in your claim
- ›A chronic service-connected pain condition almost always supports a secondary depression claim — cite 38 CFR § 3.310 and Allen v. Brown, 7 Vet. App. 439 (1995), which covers both causation and aggravation.
- ›Sleep apnea + depression is a well-recognized secondary pathway — sleep fragmentation drives mood dysregulation.
- ›Medical literature is your friend here — cite peer-reviewed studies showing the physiological link.
- ›BVA decisions are non-precedential under 38 CFR § 20.1303 but the Board and rating officials regularly find recent analogous decisions persuasive — especially when your facts materially match.
- ›Paste the suggested-citation line into VA Form 21-4138 (Statement in Support of Claim), then attach the full decision PDF as an exhibit.
More BVA grant guides
BVA decisions are public-record Department of Veterans Affairs rulings. Under 38 CFR § 20.1303 they are non-precedential but may be cited as persuasive evidence of how the Board has treated similar facts. NexusVetClaims provides software, not legal representation. This page shows retrieval output from the nexusvetclaims.com BVA corpus and is updated as new decisions are indexed.